THE SCIENTIST 177 



writes his brother, "copies of verses addressed to 

 him then, . . . anonymous effusions, some of them 

 displaying much poetical taste as well as fervor of 

 writing, and all showing the influence which his ap- 

 pearance and manner had on the more susceptible 

 of his audience." 



His study of the tanning industry (1801-1802) 

 and his lectures on agricultural chemistry (1 SOS- 

 IS 13) are indicative of the early purpose of the 

 Koyal Institution and of Davy's lifelong inclination. 

 The focus of his scientific interest, however, rested 

 on the furtherance of the application of the electrical 

 studies of Galvani and Volta in chemical analysis. 

 In a letter to the chairman of managers of the Royal 

 Institution Volta had in 1800 described his voltaic 

 pile made up of a succession of zinc and copper plates 

 in pairs separated by a moist conductor, and before 

 the end of the same year Nicholson and Carlisle had 

 employed an electric current, produced by this newly 

 devised apparatus, in the decomposition of water into 

 its elements. 



In the spring of the following year the Philosophi- 

 cal Magazine states : " We have also to notice a 

 course of lectures, just commenced at the institution, 

 on a new branch of philosophy we mean Galvanic 

 Phenomena. On this interesting branch Mr. Davy 

 (late of Bristol) gave the first lecture on the 25th of 

 April. He began with the history of Galvanism, de- 

 tailed the successive discoveries, and described the dif- 

 ferent methods of accumulating influence. . . . He 

 showed the effects of galvanism on the legs of frogs, 

 and exhibited some interesting experiments on the 

 galvanic effects on the solutions of metals in acids." 



